FOR THE SEASON

Dear Spike:

The park near our home has a strong wireless Internet connection, and so during warmer months, you and I spent a lot of time here. I’d push you around the lake with my laptop computer balanced on the cup holders on your stroller, reading and responding to my daily avalanche of e-mails while you watched the black and white geese splash land in the still water or followed the golden leaves as they tumbled from the trees.

But now it is cold. And so recently we have spent most of our days at our home. I sit at my desk and write. You play in your jungle gym and rest in your swing. When you sleep I make my phones calls. When you’re unhappy, I close my computer and play with you on the floor.

It’s a suitable arrangement. And it is better (and cheaper) than sending you to daycare every day.

But now the weekend’s storm seems to have killed our Internet connection, and the company that services the line to our home says they won’t be able to make it out until next Tuesday.

And so here we sit, in the car, in the parking lot near the greenhouse at the park. You’re resting in your safety seat in the back, I’m sitting at the wheel, looking out over the dashboard at the little old carousel. Like most things out here, it’s closed for the season.

I always thought that nostalgia only existed in decade-long increments — for childhoods long past and ball teams on which all of the players have long since retired. For a musty old church and the stale old hymns sung there. For the glamorous stars of the silver screen, long since whithered and wrinkled and retired from acting.

Today, though, I’m simply feeling nostalgic for the summer. I’m missing a time when you and I could sit together on a park bench and watch as joggers tussled with their dogs as they passed the lake and skateboarders perfected their tricks on the amphitheater steps near the old mill.

Don’t get me wrong, I do so love what winter does to this park. I love how the shadows of skeleton trees draw jagged gray lines on the snow. I love to watch sledders climb up the hill on the north end of the lake, then flop down on their sleds, rushing headfirst toward hand-built ramps of snow at the bottom of the hill.

But alas, I miss when this all was our “outside office.” And I’m looking forward to a time when it is again.

You’ll be nearly a year old by then. Perhaps you’ll be walking a bit. And soon you’ll be able to play on the swings and the slides and the sandbox. And I’ll watch from a park bench nearby, with my computer balanced on my lap and a cup of coffee on the ground by my feet.

And — who knows? — maybe I’ll grow nostalgic for the snow.

Love,
dad